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Schroff slashes A/C system energy use by a third

A Schroff UK product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Oct 28, 2009

Schroff has cut an air conditioning system's energy use by 35 per cent by fitting hot aisle/cold aisle containment, re-routing cable runs within server cabinets and reconfiguring floor tiles.

The reorganisation also provided headroom for the installation of additional servers in the existing cabinets.

It also reduced the temperature gradient within the server cabinets, extending the life of the servers and improving reliability.

The payback time on the cost of the additional hardware installation was measured in months, not years.

The data centre holds 75 server cabinets arranged in three rows in a computer room with an overall volume of 600m3.

The room was cooled by five 32kW air conditioners; during normal operation, four were running at full capacity with one as a redundant back-up.

After the installation of the Schroff hardware, which was retrofitted to the existing cabinets supplied by a third party, three of the air conditioners running at 50 per cent capacity were enough to cope with the thermal load.

Within the cabinets, the installation of 1U blanking panels at the front of the racks, the rerouting of cable runs, the sealing of the base apertures and the installation of ventilated front doors reduced the top-to-bottom temperature gradient from 10C to less than 1C; because the hot and cold air is segregated, the overall temperature within the cabinets also dropped by about 4C, despite the input temperature from the air conditioner units having increased from 17 to 22C.

Further efficiency savings have been achieved by raising the room temperature from 22 to 28C.

The reduced energy usage, direct cost reduction and the associated reduction in CO2 emissions are a significant step towards carbon-neutral operation of the facility.

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